Say goodbye to Wellington

Goodbye and yeah nah to you Wellington. 

Now away across a friendly northern shore, I don’t miss the wind, the self importance we co-possessed, the noise and the queues to be noticed. 

Or your smug, rank manufactured smell of relevance. 

The odour that always blows out to sea, 

And is lost forever, except in anecdotes, and replaced instead by still bigger egos and new currency, for now and trading upward.

But then there were the smells of the coffee and arty boho corners, the favourite spots for lunch or Java …. the theatre opportunities, the possibilities of strangers…. The young hospo staff: our smart future, educated with potential and hope and minimum wages.

Wellington you promised so much, but delivered only fleeting notes of the soundtrack I chased.

Were you just a young triers’ waiting room, where we struggled earnestly until we were sorted and spat out?  

Were a few of us, was I, really not in synch, not the right grade, or was never really able to play the game?

Is your Capital - which longs for imagined good days which allow you not to be beaten, they say, - just a place where your dreams can realise themselves grotesquely on the CV, and smear your ever so important personal brand? 

Or is it really the true heart of what was Godzone - noble, fair, conquering, governing, misplaced, and where locals are strangers?

But Goodbye and seeya - Wellington you’ve shown me all your warm balmy scripts, from politics oozing through the slate, cruising in Cuba, pinball 3 am, parties where we strove and tried hard to have fun, no matter how apart we felt.  ….and then, later parties where no one even cared anymore, just being there and seen, the liaisons, rumours, personal disasters, the wins.  

The ache of irrelevance.

We’d need all the editing in China, the splicing of transcendent moments where it did all come together spectacularly and beautifully, and we did touch the stars and a few people saw me touch the light briefly. But then I fell, my light unwanted.

 

It’s over.  And there were Too few moments in a town where the artistically gifted, watch the children play.  

And however warm, windy, tantilising, I wasn’t for you, not you for me, fun but not my sickly breakfast condiment, but an ex home which is pining for the fjords, as the poets said.

Yeah nah.